1. Technical Field
This invention relates to decorative component shutters and more particularly to an end cap for use with a component shutter which provides a finished edge appearance to an edge of a side rail of the shutter.
2. Discussion
Decorative component shutters are used in a wide-variety of applications to provide a decorative appearance, typically to the exterior of buildings. Such shutters are typically placed on both sides of a window of a building, or even a door.
More recently, component shutter assemblies having individual component parts molded from various plastics have become popular. By "component" it is meant shutters which are quickly and easily assembled from several individual component parts which are molded independently of one another prior to assembly. Typically, such component parts are either injection molded or extruded from various thermoplastics.
The typical component shutter includes a pair of side rails, at least one louver or panel section which is engageable with a track portion of each side rail, and at least one end rail positioned at either an upper or lower end of the shutter. More typically, two end rails are used, one at the top of the side rails and one at the bottom of the side rails. By cutting the side rails and the center louvered or panel section to the desired length, the overall shutter length can easily be tailored to meet the needs of specific applications.
With component shutters the side rails are specifically intended to be cut to specific lengths prior to assembly of the shutter. The side rails are typically not formed with a cover or any form of cap at each outer end thereof to provide a finished appearance to the outermost ends of each side rail. While this could be accomplished by injection molding the side rail to include covers at each outermost end thereof, the resulting side rail would only be useable for a shutter having a specific length. Accordingly, this would require different injection molding tools to produce side rails of differing lengths which each have covered end portions. The high cost of injection molding tooling, however, would significantly add to the cost of each overall model (i.e., size) of shutter if the manufacturer was forced to use different molding tools to form side rails of different lengths. Thus, it is much more economical to use a single extrusion die to form a long section of side rail which may then be cut into two or more smaller lengths for use in assembling shutters having different overall lengths.
While the above-described method of extrusion molding long sections of side rail and then cutting each side rail to the length needed does promote economical manufacture of component shutters having various overall lengths, since the side rails are not formed with any end covering, each end of the side rail has a somewhat unfinished appearance once the shutter assembly is completely assembled. The ends of each side rail have an even more unfinished appearance if one or both of the ends have been cut prior to assembly of the shutter.
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to be able to keep forming the side rails through extrusion molding techniques, which enables the side rails to be economically formed in long lengths and then cut to two or more smaller lengths, but to eliminate the unfinished appearing edges of the side rails. More specifically, it would be highly desirable to provide some form of additional component part which could be quickly and easily assembled to the outermost ends of each side rail to provide a finished appearance to each outermost end of each side rail of the shutter.
It is therefore a principal object of the present invention to provide a means by which the exposed, cut edges of each side rail of a component shutter may be covered quickly and easily with a simple, additional assembly step to provide a finished appearance to each edge of each side rail of a component shutter.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an end cap for a component shutter assembly which may be quickly and easily slidably inserted into an exposed end portion of a side rail of a component shutter to thereby provide a finished looking edge surface to that particular end of the side rail.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide an end cap for use with a component shutter, in which the end cap may be quickly and easily molded from a suitable thermoplastic to produce an inexpensive means for providing a finished looking edge to an outermost end of a side rail of the component shutter.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an end cap for covering an open end of a side rail of a component shutter, where the end cap may be quickly and easily inserted into the open end of the side rail during assembly of the shutter to thereby provide a decorative finished appearance to the outermost edge of the side rail.
It is further an object of the present invention to provide a means for closing-off the exposed edge portions of the side rails of a component shutter without adding appreciably to the overall cost of the component shutter.